Alison Stacey

The Nursing and Midwifery Council has warned healthcare employers to make stringent identity checks when hiring new staff, highlighting patient safety implications. The call comes after it investigated six cases where registered nurses’ details have been used by non-nurses to secure jobs as nurses and midwives and hospital trusts and agencies in England.

NHS England’s national standardised uniforms for healthcare staff will soon be launched at trusts that took part in trials this year. The uniforms are colour-coded by profession and role and have been described in feedback from staff trials as easy to wear and launder, with good temperature control. Development and implementation of the national uniform has taken six years, and completion of the roll-out is expected to take a few more years due to existing contracts.

The new Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) interim chief executive Paul Rees should work with nurses’ unions to transform the UK nursing regulator’s culture and performance, a union leader has urged. An independent review found the organisation has a toxic culture that poses risks for nurses, nursing associates and public safety. The founder of a nurses’ campaign group shares doubts about what the new head can achieve during a one-year interim term, given the scale of improvement required in the NMC’s fitness to practise processes.

The new Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) interim chief executive Paul Rees should work with nurses’ unions to transform the UK nursing regulator’s culture and performance, a union leader has urged. An independent review found the organisation has a toxic culture that poses risks for nurses, nursing associates and public safety. The founder of a nurses’ campaign group shares doubts about what the new head can achieve during a one-year interim term, given the scale of improvement required in the NMC’s fitness to practise processes.

A Nursing and Midwifery Council fitness to practise panel said as a newly registered nurse in 2022 Rose Stark put vulnerable patients at risk in the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust neonatal intensive care unit by signing off three competencies in her competency booklet that had not been completed. Her ward sister supervisor denied signing the booklet. Witnesses told the panel she was overconfident of her skills.

Two district nurses claim they are together owed around £90,000 in years of back pay after their NHS employer failed to implement the outcome of a job evaluation. Nursing union GMB is backing the nurses after a role review upgraded their positions from band 6 to band 7. The nurses describe the toll of their long struggle for the pay they say they are due, saying it’s a battle for fairness and respect

The RCN, Unison and Unite nursing unions have written a joint letter to health and social care secretary Wes Streeting urging him to axe the NHS pay review body (RB) process in favour of direct ‘round-the-table’ negotiations for NHS 2025-2026 pay. Unions say 1 million NHS staff in England, including nurses, will not receive pay rises on time in April 2025 if the government waits for the RB to report. The unions' joint letter to Mr Streeting states: ‘Sticking with the out-of-date pay review body process risks repeating the mistakes of the past.'

Under fire Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) cannot ‘be the police of nurses’ and must learn to live with some risk in healthcare, says Anthony Omo, who is on secondment from the General Medical Council to advise the nursing regulator on reducing caseload and to share good practice. He told NMC members that ‘healthcare is dangerous, and so there is a level of risk you need to live with’. Six nurses have reportedly died by suicide in a year while under fitness to practise investigation by the NMC

Number of newly registered nurses and midwives leaving the professions has jumped by almost 50% at a time when nurse recruitment is slowing. The scale of departures from the Nursing and Midwifery Council register is a devastating result of low pay, understaffing and burnout, according to a nurse leader. The proportion who quit the NMC register within five years rose by 48.6%. Almost half of nurses and midwives now joining are internationally educated, with the largest group coming from India. The NMC cautioned that leavers’ data should be viewed in the context of a record overall number on the register.

As nurses struggle to cope with staffing and workload pressures, professional expectations, traumatic work events and toxic environments, some resort to harmful behaviours to self-manage stress, anxiety or poor mental health. One study estimates rates of substance misuse, abuse and addiction are as high as 20% among nurses. We explore reasons why nurses hesitate to seek help, and what happens if a nurse is referred to the profession’s regulator the Nursing and Midwifery Council for addiction-related issues.